10 Milestones of WWE's long road of decline

#5 The Super Cena Era and the Move to PG

Following his WWE Championship victory at WrestleMania 21, John Cena was positioned as the top star in the company. He had gotten over on his own in the early 2000s, and by 2005 was the most popular star, so the move made sense. On the one hand, WWE had finally found its next "guy." On the other, his push became the subject of controversy in ways that his predecessors had not been.

Cena's character, which initially started edgy and cool, became lamer as the years went on, and his prominence is intimately tied in with WWE's move to PG in the summer of 2008. Cena came to exemplify the PG philosophy, and while he had the charisma to pull it off well, the creative direction simply lacked the pop and realism seen in previous years.

Compare the above segment, with the infamous "JBL is poopy" line, to what we had seen in the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras. The shift to PG landed WWE some lucrative sponsorship deals, among other things, but it was undoubtedly a move that gave rise to creative plagues in the long term, shackling the programming with sterile, corporate content that drove old fans away and prevented new ones from coming in.

When Cena's time at the top was up, Vince McMahon went with Roman Reigns, who couldn't pull off the same act. With the combination of such sterile programming and a lead "guy" that couldn't sell it, WWE's creative and ratings declined, which had been more or less steady since 2001, accelerated.